Google Adsense Referrers Deadpool – No More Google Affiliate Program

To the surprise of no one in the affiliate marketing industry, the Google Adsense Referrers program officially enters the deadpool. This service will be reborn as the Google Affiliate Network using the property Google acquired from the DoubleClick.com deal in March 2008 for $3.1 Billion.

Google now is a serious player in the affiliate ad space and it will be fun to see if they integrate this into other properties such as adsense and youtube.

I would love to have one place to be able to manage all my ads, and Google may create such a system. The one thing that would drive me away from this affiliate program is if Google required javascript links. I only use RSS feeds and text links, and a switch to Java Script only would be a deal breaker.

Transcript from the Google Adsense team

Thank you for participating in the AdSense Referrals program.
We’re writing to let you know that we will be retiring the AdSense
Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate
your patience during this transition and here are some alternative
options to consider:

* Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of
DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now
operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting
users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense
Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers
to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on
advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For
further details, please visit:
www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork.
* AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense
for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the
referral ad units with standard AFC ad units.

If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google
products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals
code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August.
We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is
retired:

* Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a
moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last
week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your
ad space.
* Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create
and save all reports related to the referrals program on your
desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign
information

Why is this happening?
We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing
and supporting features which drive the best monetization results
for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing
features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most
effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring
the AdSense Referrals program. If you have any additional
questions, please visit our Help Center:
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=14882

Sincerely.

The Google AdSense Team

———————————————————————————————

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service
announcement to update you about the retirement of an AdSense
feature.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

It’s not polite to gloat, but it is nice to prove Michael Arrington wrong once in a while. Read Write and Double Click have coverage of this affiliate marketing deal.